Clanging barbels and racing treadmills fill the heat soaked air inside the gym, where the broken air conditioner makes each step that much harder. I run facing the street, with windows twice my height mirroring back my image and giving me a view of the outside world. I count trains and cars and pedestrians to keep the time moving, trying to ignore the burning in my legs and chest. A car stops at the light, and now I’m distracted. The headlights are evenly placed to where they appear to shine out from the reflection of my own eyes. Is that what the philosophers meant when they told us that the soul of a person shines out of their eyes? Or the artists who say that the eyes are the window to the soul? I find I can hardly believe that remark. If it were true, there is no possible universe where my soul would be such a pure color. I have felt too much, seen too much, done too much for it to be simply white. No. I envision it to be a kaleidoscope of colors and hues, both darkness and light bound together in a triumphant dance. My passions and despairs, my aspirations and fears, the parts of me I gladly show the world and the pieces I hide away from view; all are too complex, too interdependent, too vast to be condensed to one single stream of light. Then I wonder what mine would look like to other people, would it be breathtaking and beautiful, heartbreaking and terrifying, or something completely different? And what then of the rest of the world? What if we knew the soul of a person by the lights in their eyes? What if les amoureux have discovered the secret, that they have discovered the ability to see past a person’s pupils and into their soul?

I looked out my window one night, wanting to wish among the stars, and found that they were hidden by a multitude of glowing lamps. I tried to remember where I had found my glittering friends before, squinting to just maybe find their shape in the heavens. Then I wondered if they had fallen, had tripped across the indigo blanket and landed softly on the earth, and where they might be walking, to find their way back home. Do the city streets confuse them, the strangely colored lights and unyielding bewilderment of being? Do they run into people, only to be brushed off with any attempted apologies? Can they see their home, their glorious nightly dance happening without them? And do they miss it? I wanted to wish upon a star, and when one fell I cried instead. I spoke many words, and aimed to connect the dots back to the stratosphere, but I lost myself and found a home in a forgotten wilderness instead. They who called those wilds their hearth brought me in to dwell, and gave me room to survey my new milieu. I asked them once, if they had seen that fallen star that I had been chasing since that fateful night. They turned to me and said:

“My dear, we are all fallen stars here, and you the brightest one in centuries.”

They say that creating art is an escape from reality. The musician with their tunes, the painter with their colors, the sketcher with their lines, the writer with their words, the photographer with their shots. I find it impossible to watch the clock while I paint or sketch or create. More than that, it’s as if I lose those hours. I sometimes cannot remember what I thought about for upwards of 10 hours or even if I took a break to eat or drink. It’s as if the color and the process consumes me whole and I spiral into an ever deeper rift in time. I was sat today for two hours creating a collage at an event my friend and I found, and I don’t think we spoke at all. It is comical to think that we intentionally chose this time to hang out together, but did not say a word to each other, while all around us was chaos and chattering aplenty. We disappeared together into the rabbit hole of art, and surfaced much later, dazed and confused as to where the time went. We were Alice, and we created a Wonderland in colorful strips of paper.